


A Difficult Phone Call

by mynameisntburgerpants



Series: The mynameisntburgerpants Anthology [1]
Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Angst, BP's parents are the cut RG03 and RG04, Gen, burgerpants's name is "jonathan walsh" here, domestic angst, this whole thing is the byproduct of an extensive network of headcanons and RP encounters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-16
Updated: 2017-10-16
Packaged: 2019-01-18 05:12:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,094
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12381597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mynameisntburgerpants/pseuds/mynameisntburgerpants
Summary: Burgerpants uses his day off to confront something he'd been shoving under the rug. Based on my RP blog, mynameisntburgerpants.





	A Difficult Phone Call

BP’s finger hovered over the “call” button on his phone.

He was having nightmares again. Pangs of guilt, twinges of doubt, the very idea perturbing him that what he had done was unhealthy, ill-advised, misguided, _wrong,_ manifesting in his subconscious as he attempted to sleep the one night per week when he had the time to do just that. If nothing else, he needed closure. He had to expose himself to the idea that maybe ma and mama weren’t bitter hags playing the long con with him after all–and furthermore, he needed to believe it himself without some mystical, pie-in-the-sky “objective proof” that would instantly dispel his misgivings without him having to put in any effort on his own part to trust other people. Only then, pretty much everyone told him, would these nightmares stop.

BP’s finger hovered anxiously over the “call” button on his phone.

Mettaton graciously provided Burgerpants a birthday present: he could take the day off without getting fired. Still unpaid, but...the levity was a boon in and of itself. In the days leading up to his birthday, one of his coworkers had caught him talking about some unfinished business with his mothers back home, and had convinced him to finally get everything squared away. His absence must’ve been so hard on them, after all–and as little as he wanted to admit it, the reverse was also true. Running away from home at age 15 was no small feat and it took no small toll on the fast food employee’s development towards becoming a functioning adult.

BP’s finger hovered nervously over the “call” button on his phone.

Monster nightmares were a funny thing, really. A lot more straightforward than human nightmares. A whole lot less ambiguous. When you’re a monster, a being whose very physical presence in the world can be dictated by emotions, you get a whole lot better at recognizing them, symbolically or otherwise. Whether that makes you more effective at sorting them out is a whole other matter, but it’s a start.

BP’s finger hovered skittishly over the “call” button on his phone.

The underground was a small place, and it, thankfully, didn’t take a comprehensive search for Jon to find who he was looking for. They hadn’t moved away from his childhood home, and, if the Monster Yellow Pages were any indication, they hadn’t changed phone services or phones. They were up to date as far as he knew, at least. He used to call whenever he was on his way home from school and needed someone to talk to after a rough day. Ma would help him come to terms with the crummy things that had transpired during the day in a constructive manner, while mama was always one to come up with ideas worth looking forward to, to take his mind off of said crummy things.

BP’s finger tapped the “call” button on his phone.

And he immediately regretted it. The same dial tone from the dinky old landline his mothers used rang crystal clear; not through the receiver of his own phone–since the audio was reasonably compressed as one might expect–but in his head. What if he was right? What if it was all for nothing? Worse, what if it wasn’t, but they didn’t believe it was him? He had changed so much for the worse compared to the baby boy they had known and raised from years six to fifteen. What if they _didn’t_ have ill intentions for him at first, but they came to resent him for abandoning them? But then, he figured, at least he’d know for sure and it wouldn’t be eating at him as badly–the way he figured, anyway.

BP’s finger hovered over the “hang up” button on his phone.

First dial tone. Second dial tone. Third–Cutoff. Background noise for a couple seconds. ”…Hello?” There was an oddly somber tone to the voice on the other end, but it was recognizably ma’s. Sapphire Walsh, former Royal Guardswoman. Now he couldn’t hang up without looking like a weirdo. He put the phone on speaker–since he didn’t have his earbuds on hand and there was no other way to comfortably have the phone physically in range of both his ears and his face, since his ears were on the top of his head. Granted, nothing else about this exchange was going to be comfortable, either, but… Damn it, he was trying too hard to focus on anything _but_ the situation at hand. He needed to zone in and make this happen…

But that didn’t stop BP’s finger from hovering over the “hang up” button on his phone.

He took a second before attempting to respond, ranking up there as one of the longest seconds of his entire life up to this point. He wanted to choose his words carefully but he was at a loss. He had intended to plan this encounter out, map it from start to finish, but he didn’t get even so far as having the metaphorical parchment on which to draw a map. So, he started to hyperventilate–he thought he was all ready to go, but he didn’t know where he was going.

BP’s finger slowly approached the “hang up” button on his phone, but recoiled back away from it as the woman on the line spoke up again.

“Listen,” Sapphire started, “I’m not sure if you’re a telemarketer, or a bill collector, or something else entirely, but…today is kind of a difficult day for me and my partner, and I would appreciate it if whatever you had to say or sell could wait until tomorrow, or maybe the next day? Thank you.” There was a decisive tone to her voice, like she didn’t want to talk to anyone she didn't direly need to.

BP’s finger drifted closer to the “hang up” button on his phone.

He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t bring himself to tell them. They set his own damn birthday aside to _grieve_. He could wait until tomorrow, couldn’t he? And maybe when tomorrow hit, it could wait until tomorrow again! If he’s making the decision every day to wait until the next, it didn’t count as procrastinating in the long-term, right? He wasn’t in the right place and he wasn’t sure if he’d ever be. The fact that he managed to even press “call” in the first place was more than enough of an exercise in bravery for one day.

BP’s finger pressed firmly down onto the “hang up” button on his phone.


End file.
